A wide variety of products are currently available in the medical field for use as bandages in treating surgical incisions, abrasions, cuts, burns, and other various wounds. Plain and medicated bandages are widely employed in a variety of environments including hospitals (after major surgery) and private homes (for minor accidental injuries). Such bandages are used on various parts of the body to protect wounds from contamination and from further injury. However, in spite of their wide acceptance, such prior art bandages are not without their disadvantages.
Prior art bandages, such as Band-Aids® for example, usually comprise a backing, a cushion or pad, and typically two or more pressure sensitive adhesive masses coated on portions of one side of the backing for attaching the bandage to the patient's skin. Since such bandages include an adhesive/skin contact point, it was necessary to formulate adhesives which provide adherence of the bandage to the skin while still exhibiting the necessary degree of release when intentionally removing the bandage so as not to damage the skin. For many types of wounds, frequent changes of such bandages are necessary to observe the healing process and to apply medications. Unfortunately, frequent removal of the adhesive section from contact with the skin will eventually cause trauma to even relatively healthy skin and is particularly undesirable for patients with poor circulation, something common among older patients with diabetes.
Additionally, it is known that during an active day for a typical person, portions of the human skin stretch as much as 30% of its outstretched size. Such stretching typically shortens the adhesive life of an adhesive bandage and often results in objectionable transfer of adhesive from the bandage to the skin. Thus, for such bandages, it is desirable for the adhesive layer to have a flexible quality characteristic of rubber based adhesives. Unfortunately, rubber based adhesives may irritate the wound or the surrounding healthy skin. Restated, adhesives used by an adhesive-to-skin contact bandage should be hypoallergenic, which is not a characteristic of natural rubber based adhesives.
What is needed is a bandage that will reduce or eliminate the above described disadvantages by not requiring an adhesive-skin contact point thereby allowing any type of adhesive to be used.
Another problem with prior art bandages concerns issues relating to efficiency and versatility. No single dressing is suitable for all types of wounds. Different types of wounds and the different stages of healing typically require different dressings or combinations of dressings. Indeed, a number of different types of dressings may be used during the healing process of a single wound. Notably, however, the wound site does not change, and thus, the bandage configuration/size that attaches to the body best should not change significantly over short durations of time. Once an optimal bandage shape/configuration is established for a particular wound site, especially for larger wounds, it would be convenient and more efficient to use the same bandage shape and only change the dressing or pad.
As noted above, prior art bandages usually comprise a backing, a cushion or pad, and typically two or more pressure sensitive adhesive masses coated on portions of one side of the backing for attaching the bandage to the patient's skin. Since such bandages include an adhesive/skin contact point, the entire bandage is typically discarded after a single use. What is needed is a bandage that comprises a replaceable/configurable pad section that allows the non-pad section to be reused.